Recode
by trufflemores
Summary: 4.01. Being in the Speed Force changed Barry. No one knows how much.


Standing in the center of the Cortex, Cisco asks quietly, "Can I hug you?"

Barry steps forward and tucks his arms under Cisco's, pressing his palms flat against Cisco's back. Holding on tightly. "I wasn't there for you," he says. "When Dante died." Cisco's grip tightens on his back until it hurts. "And nothing I say will ever erase the pain I caused you." Inhaling deeply, he insists, "But I'm sorry." Hugging hard, he repeats softly, "I'm so, so sorry."

Cisco presses his forehead to Barry's shoulder and sniffs hard, fighting tears. They stay like that for a long time, until their heart beats are almost synced: ten of Barry's tap-a-tap-a-taps for every two of Cisco's own beats, th-thump. They've never been perfectly in sync. Maybe it's better that way. When Cisco lets go and steps back, Barry meets his eyes and says simply, "I can take you to him."

Cisco brings a hand to his wrist and squeezes it hard enough to bruise. "Barry," he rasps. His tone rebukes. _Prometheus. What have you done for them?_

But Barry doesn't back down. "I won't alter the timeline," he says. "But I can take you to him."

Cisco stares at him. The hunger in his eyes is wild, red-hot and obsidian. "Okay," he says. Steeling his grip on Barry's sleeve, he repeats, "Okay, Barry."

Closing his eyes, Barry sees the stars, points of light crowding each other, overwhelming each other. He breathes deeply, and the lights resolve into recognizable patterns, constellations sketching the space. Within four breaths, he has the room in his mind's eye, a perfect replica in reverse, darkness where light pervades. This is how the Speed Force sees the world – impressionistic, wild, and a little bit terrifying. For the warmth at his side does not resolve into a human being but remains a point of light like the rest. Speech disappears. Communication of all kind fades away here, in this realm between the Speed Force and the reality he knows.

He firms his grip on Cisco's shoulder and guides the point of light beside him forward, projecting backward, rearranging those constellations, letting the present dissolve. The Speed Force fractures here, struggling to translate its messages across the fathomless depths, but Barry thinks about Cisco, and stays grounded. He thinks about Joe, and stays grounded. He thinks about Iris, and stays grounded.

He walks forward, letting the stars dance into new patterns as the present dissolves slowly. With each step, the points of light rearrange, sketching a new space. Crossing over to a new time.

When he opens his eyes, they're not at STAR Labs anymore. Relief sweeps over him: he recognizes Cisco's home – and Cisco does, too, breath shallowing. He squeezes Cisco's shoulder affirmatively, stating the obvious. _We're here_. Then he forces in another deep breath and focuses on keeping them there.

It's not easy, balancing realities. During his communion with the Speed Force, he learned that the present was concurrent with the past. Every moment was accessible because every moment existed _simultaneously_. Applying the same principle of temporal fluidity to the more rigid Multiverse is challenging because the Multiverse doesn't like concurrence. It suffocates in a flux as surely as a vacuum. It insists on a single present moment ( _one breath in, one breath out_ ), but Barry – Barry doesn't have to follow its rules anymore. He knows the two codebooks by heart. And he can apply the Speed Force here, just as he can take the Multiverse there.

He keeps his breathing steady and the ground stays solid beneath him. The Speed Force struggles to compensate with the sensory input, anxious and over-helpful. It tries to impose hundreds of senses he does not need over his human ones, occluding his perception of reality. Undeterred, he takes the restless energy and quells it, focusing only on the most relevant aspects of the scene and letting the rest fade to background noise, aware of it but not arrested by it.

Thunder rumbles softly in the background, a mid-summer storm brewing outside the safety of the room. No one is home yet; Barry considers it a small mercy. It gives them an opportunity to adjust, to take it all in. It's only been a year, here, one-minus the present, but everything seems different: the smooth walls bespeak calm, the wood floors routine, the ambient silence like a crackling fire, promising safety.

Barry leads and Cisco follows, but when Barry takes a seat on a couch, Cisco stays standing. With mechanical steps, Cisco approaches the baby grand piano in the corner, taking a seat in front of it. His solemnity and awe is obvious even from here, but Barry doesn't interrupt him, letting the firm press of the couch underneath him calm him. He feels simultaneously detached and deeply ensconced in the scene, watching it happen to someone else, entirely removed from the world.

His entire perception of reality has been thrown, ever since that doorway opened and let him back into this strange, chaotic, overwhelming place. The Speed Force knew exactly what it was doing, knew exactly the sort of wool his friends attempted to pull over its eyes, and still looked at him and did not smile, precisely, but let him go without a fight. It took the false gift in hand and banished him. And when he followed the stars towards the darkness, he found blinding light instead.

His friends asked what he remembered from his "beautiful mind" phase, and he lied and said _nothing_ because it was easier than _everything_.

He knows they see through the statement – he's never been good at lying – but he doesn't rescind it. He still can't verbalize the Speed Force's feelings, because the Speed Force has none. It has no emotions, no independent relationship with his loved ones. It exists in a true vacuum, engaging him in that alien Other way that puts off some and entrances others. Still it emotes powerfully, acts decisively, and organizes in ways that Barry cannot describe in words, somehow alive and deeply not, a creature not of the Earth.

The only way to understand the Speed Force is to stare into the golden, unblinking eyes of a feral animal and see oneself in them, the animal and the stranger, the known and the unknown, the sense of being and the dissolution of self. It's what Barry still sees when he catches his reflection in the glass of a window nearby: a lone wolf, struggling to play only by the Multiverse's handbook as the Speed Force hungers for release, _let's do more, let's do more_.

 _Wait_ , he tells it, and it does, and at last there comes a knock on the door.

Cisco doesn't move; neither does Barry. After a moment, Dante lets himself in, dropping his keys and coat near a rack, exhaling deeply as he toes off his shoes. He looks over and sees them, startling a little. "I didn't realize you two were crashing here," he says, and there's a fatigue in his voice that does not hide disappointment well. Barry recognizes it from his own deep-headache nights when even greeting Iris felt like too much, his every bone exhausted from the fight, his mind wrung dry.

Quick and unsteady, Cisco stands. He stumbles over to Dante and halts abruptly in front of him, unable to close the final gap between them. Some of Dante's exhaustion bleeds out as he asks softly, "Cisco?"

Then Cisco sobs, and Dante steps forward and hugs him. "What's wrong?" he asks, but Cisco can't say. When Dante looks over at Barry, he fears for a moment that his eyes will give it all away, but they mustn't betray him, for Dante refocuses his attention on Cisco without comment. "Did something happen?"

Cisco sobs like his heart is breaking, like the world is ending, and Barry's own heart fractures, devastated by the sight. The Speed Force flushes him, like a drug, the warmth is so intense, and he recalibrates to it, allowing his heart beat to slow to a torpor, his eyelids to drift partway shut, his body to accept that which it can never control, the back-and-forth of power and pain.

 _Look what you can do,_ it seems to say, and he blinks once, twice, and then lets his eyelids slide shut.

He awakes with an afghan blanket draped over him, the passage of time marked only by an unwatched clock on the wall. Cisco and Dante aren't in sight, but Barry can hear their calm voices upstairs. Satisfaction warms his chest. _Everything is fine_ , he thinks, pressing the afghan to his nose, breathe-in, breathe-out. _Everything is fine_.

Cisco's mother appears a great time later, greeting him with only mild surprise and genuine warmth. He makes himself useful in the kitchen, helping her unload groceries, careful not to speed through any of it, because no matter how many people seem in on his secret, there are so many who aren't, so many who _can't_ be. She cooks supper and the air fills with a satisfying array of aromas that settle comfortably in his chest, sating him long before the offer of food becomes tangible. He finds his appetite absent even though he hasn't eaten since his return. He didn't need to in the Speed Force, it feels optional here. It is – to the extent that his continued presence depends on it. But the Speed Force will always be a place he can go.

Cisco's father appears a short time after and the five of them dine together, trading idle, inconsequential conversation. It's nice – normal – and he finds himself relaxing into it. He eats as little as politely possible, forgoing dessert entirely, not-really-into-it. His appetite will come back, he is sure, but he doesn't need it now to be happy. Cisco is happy – and Dante is alive – and maybe it's not fair to bring them into contact, postmortem, but it seems equally cruel to keep them apart.

 _I don't have all the answers,_ he thinks, suddenly overwhelmed by the thought of playing God, dizzy with it. _I … I shouldn't have brought him here._

He must look ill because Cisco's mother asks if he's all right. He's not, but he nods anyway, and cannot force down another morsel of food. The conversation ebbs, and soon Cisco is quietly excusing himself and Barry, keeping a steadying hand on Barry's back like he needs it.

And maybe, he can admit, he does – needs the warmth and the firmness of a kind human hand to keep him from drifting away to that other place where nothing was real and no one else could hear him. Just the Speed Force, when it chose to engage, if it chose to engage. He's shaking a little by the time they're outside, and it isn't because of the rain drizzling lightly down. With a deep breath, he closes his eyes and clasps Cisco's shoulder, and this time they sweep through time with nauseating abruptness. When he opens his eyes, they're back in the Cortex, exactly where they left it, the only hints of their passing the raindrops still clinging to their clothes. He lets go of Cisco and lurches over to a wall, pressing both hands against it, aching for a moment for the pen, the pen, he needs the pen.

Cautiously, Cisco steps up behind him and places a hand on his back. "Barry?" he tries.

Barry bows his head, breathing harshly. The hand on his back moves in steady lines, up and down, up and down. He bites his lip and says, "I'm sorry."

Sighing, Cisco steps up to his side and hugs him, tears pressed to Barry's side. "Nothing will ever make it easy," he acknowledges, and it sounds like it's actively tearing his heart in half to admit it, "but I have to believe it will get better."

Slowly, almost afraid he'll disappear, Barry turns to him and wraps him in another hug, holding as still as he can. Afraid to change anything. Afraid to be lost at sea again. "I missed you," he says, and means it. "When I was gone, I missed you."

Cisco sniffs, and Barry squeezes him. "Don't leave us," Cisco says simply. "Okay? Let Central City burn. Let someone else take the fall. It can't be you."

But Barry thinks about that great and terrible power within him, that entire universe and beyond, full of dancing points of light, and knows he could never let the city burn for him. "I'll try," is all he can say.

It's enough, and they let go, and Barry wraps an arm around Cisco's shoulders as they walk out of the Labs, because he needs it, because Cisco needs it. Cisco tucks an arm around his waist, and they keep each other sane, and safe, and bound in the same reality, the same difficult and sharp and wonderful reality.

It's never going to be perfect, but maybe, he thinks, as they walk and calm settles over his shoulders, the Speed Force falling second to the simple human pleasure of a warm friend at his side – maybe they'll be all right.

No matter how many hours it takes to find peace here, he thinks, it will all be worth it.


End file.
